The invention is in the field of mechanical engineering and mechanics and relates to rotors for pumps.
Rotor pumps can be used in a versatile manner and are very powerful with a corresponding design and speed of the rotor. The rotors can generally be designed as axially conveying or centrifugally conveying rotors and have corresponding impeller blades.
Such pumps are of particular interest when they are made very small in relationship with their conveying power in that they can be compressed for transport and expanded for operation. A specific application of such pumps in the medical field relates to invasive pumps which can be conveyed into the body of a patient in the radially compressed state and can be expanded there to achieve the desired conveying power.
Such pumps can be used, for example, as heart-assisting blood conveying pumps and can be conveyed through a blood vessel into a bodily cavity in order to be radially expanded there. Typically for this purpose, both the rotor and, where present, also a corresponding pump housing are radially compressible and expandable.
Such a pump is known, for example, from the U.S. Pat. No. 7,393,181 B2. With a rotor, a plurality of vanes are manufactured in one piece with a hub there and can be folded onto said hub in the transport state due to their material elasticity in order to compress the rotor radially. In operation, the vanes erect themselves so that the conveying power is increased accordingly. The material of the rotor there has to be selected carefully with respect to its elasticity properties and deformability properties in order, on the one hand, to be able to be pressed easily to the hub and, on the other hand, to be able to exert sufficient force on the liquid to be conveyed in operation.
A very similar pump is known from the US patent application US 2008/0114339 A1, where a corresponding rotor additionally cooperates with a housing which is likewise compressible and expandable. The housing is said to be expanded by the force effect of the erecting rotor vanes in the operation of the rotor.
Against the background of this prior art, it is the underlying object of the present invention to provide a rotor for a pump which can be radially compressed with as little exertion of force as possible and which, on the other hand, can be expanded just as easily in operation and has the required stability for the thrust effect in the expanded state.